Nintendo Wii U User Accidentally Hacks Miiverse

On the NeoGAF forum, Nintendo Wii U user "Trike" recently announced that he had stumbled on a way to access the "debug" menu on Nintendo's Miiverse.

"All he did was hover over the exit button of Miiverse and pressed the 'X' button on the GamePad," writes Geek.com's Matthew Humphries. "He was then presented with a prototype Miiverse in Japanese, could see lists of admin accounts, regenerate passwords, view other gamer’s (and developer’s) private messages, and had the option to delete accounts."

"Titles on the hidden Wii U menu include a 'Yoshi's Land Wii U' -- which looks like an unannounced title in Nintendo's popular game series -- and evidence of a game in developer Konami's Metal Gear series," writes Computing News' Peter Gothard.

"Approximately two hours after users were made aware of the debug method, Nintendo released a fix -- and Trike reported that 'a certain developer that I greatly respect PM'd me saying that I might get into some legal trouble or jailtime with Nintendo for this,'" writes ZDNet's Charlie Osborne.

"Nintendo has now clarified the issue after confusion emerged as to whether the images of the menus were fake or real," writes Games Industry International's Dan Pearson. "'It has come to our attention that some people were able to access a mock up menu on Miiverse following the launch of Wii U in the US,' reads the official statement given to Games Industry International. 'Please note that this was only a mock up menu and has now been removed and is not accessible.'"

"Is the apparent security snafu damaging to Nintendo? Probably not," writes Naked Security's Graham Cluley. "They appear to have resolved the issue quickly, and there is no suggestion that sensitive information was stolen from users, unlike last year's Sony PlayStation network hack where hackers stole the personal data of millions of people."